Winter is here! Get your sweaters ready!

With winter comes a new season of fashion. Great for the ladies and gentlemen out there with the cash and time to prepare a fancy wardrobe. From beautiful gloves to sexy-but-warm coats, there’s something for anyone who looks.

But there’s one item of clothing that, despite how warm and comfy it is, no one should ever be seen wearing in public: the novelty sweater.

Okay, “never” may be a strong word, but it’s pretty difficult to find someone who actually makes a fluffy knit sweater look good. Even Gackt would struggle to pull it off.

And to demonstrate just how awful sweaters can be on everyone from the beautiful, rich and famous to regular folks like us, our Japanese sister-site Pouch showed us an album of horrible sweater photos they recently found on a German site and by which Japan has been greatly amused. It was just so cringe-worthy that we had to share it with you!

As atrocious as novelty sweaters are, if you’re really determined, you might be able to make them work. But, as they wrote over on Pouch, there are really only two ways to pull off looking good in one of them: find something that really, really suits you or wear something so cheap-looking that it could never be mistaken for anything but a crappy winter sweater worn for comedic effect.

So, check out the horrid-yet-awesome sweaters below. And if you have some photos of yourself bundled up in grandma’s woollen handiwork, don’t hesitate to share it with us!

▼Yep, it’s a keyboard. And, holy crap, the muffler is a keyboard too!
We’re guessing that this goes in the “cheap” category…